Friday, October 14, 2011

A good read?

For the past several years, Carey and I have given each other magazine subscriptions as Christmas presents.  Usually we also buy something larger together that counts as a Christmas present (last year it was our laptop), but it's also nice to have something that is just for him, or just for me.  And a magazine subscription is great, because it's a gift that continues all year. 

Carey always gets Popular Mechanics - yawn, he can have that one all to himself.  Although, I did learn this interesting fact from PM - in the case of an on-going emergency situation, one of the most useful things to have in your "stockpile" is beer - apparently you can then trade it for just about anything else you need. ;)

Anyways, for a few years I got Glamour magazine.  And I really liked it for a while, but about 2 years ago I started feeling that it wasn't overly relevant to me anymore.  The articles about relationships focused on finding the right man, which I had already done.  There was lots of beauty and fashion info that was completely useless to me, as I'm not one to go purchase new 'fads' or change my beauty routine very often.  Articles about careers - no thanks.  Recipes - nothing that I could feed my kids.  There were still some articles that I found interesting (and I liked that it had some celebrity news without being overly tabloid-ish), and the "do's and don't's" were always fun to look at, but overall, I figured that maybe it was time to try something different.

So, for the past year I've subscribed to Today's Parent, thinking it would be more appropriate for my life.  However, I haven't really enjoyed it.  Since it is for parents of kids of all ages, there is often quite a bit of information that's not relevant to the stage that we're at.  And I'm not likely to remember what I've read years from now, and I'm definitely not going to keep the magazines for years and years until the info is relevant.  The other thing I don't really like about it is that it seems to me that there is sort of an "attachment parenting" slant to a lot of the articles.  Now, don't get me wrong, I have nothing against the attachment parenting style - in fact, one of my dearest friends uses that style of parenting, and I have learned quite a lot from her.  However, it is not my style of parenting.  At least not as a whole.  So I don't really want to pay to read about things like extended breastfeeding and co-sleeping, just as I didn't want to pay for fashion advice that I wouldn't use.  The one other thing I didn't really like was that this was supposed to be a present just for me, something fun and relaxing, and I didn't really want to think about bedtime routines or if I should feel guilty about vaccinating my children when I'm having "me" time.

So I won't be renewing my subscription to Today's Parent this year.  Which brings me to my question - what magazine should I get instead?  I'd like something that maybe has some parenting info, but is not completely focused on that.  Something with practical ideas for beauty and fashion; easy, kid-friendly recipes; and maybe just a small dose of celebrity news (I don't watch any reality shows, so I feel completely out of touch with magazines like People and Us that have teen moms and survivors and Kardashians on their covers half the time).  Does anyone have any suggestions? 

2 comments:

Andrea said...

Hmmm...my girls are doing a magazine subscription fund-raiser for school...I could bring along the booklet and you could peruse it for some ideas?

I'm not much of a magazine reader myself, so I don't know if I have any specific suggestions...

Pamela said...

I subscribed to "Family Fun" for years and I loved it. I stopped getting it when I realized I didn't have time to peruse it the way I once did. Their website is pretty good too and you can search up ideas. It is a disney owned magazine (I think!) and that does seem to slant some of their vacation articles but overall I enjoyed it.

I got a focus on the family magazine called "thriving famiy" which was a good read with good things to think about.

I'm curious to see what others recommend.